The U.S. maternal mortality rate jumped in 2021, the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to data released Thursday, which shows black women are more than twice as likely to die as white women .
Maternal mortality is defined by the World Health Organization as death occurring during pregnancy or within 42 days following, for a cause related to or aggravated by this pregnancy or its management.
A total of 1,205 women thus died in the United States in 2021, compared to 861 in 2020 and 754 in 2019, according to a report by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
The maternal mortality rate therefore stood at 32.9 deaths per 100,000 births in 2021, compared to 23.8 per 100,000 births in 2020 and 20.1 in 2019.
The last time the U.S. maternal mortality rate was this high was officially in the mid-1960s — though a new methodology has been in use since 2018.
This is also the worst rate among industrialized countries.
Maternal mortality has indeed generally declined in the world in the 20th century thanks to medical advances. But since the 2000s, the United States has been on the wrong track again, unlike most other comparable countries.
And the data also shows strong inequalities.
In 2021, the maternal mortality rate was 69.9 per 100,000 births among black women, more than double that of white women, which was 26.6 per 100,000 births.
The NCHS did not provide an explanation for this sharp rise in the maternal mortality ratio in 2021 or for the disparities between black and white women.
But according to medical experts, the pandemic is a big factor, as are socio-economic conditions and a lack of access to pre- and post-natal care for many black women.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has had a dramatic and tragic effect on maternal mortality rates but we cannot hide the fact that there was – and still is – a maternal mortality crisis.“said Iffath Abbasi Hoskins, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
“Pregnant and postpartum black people continue to account for a disproportionate number of maternal deaths at alarmingly rising rates“, he added in a press release.This trend must be stopped“.
